Wow, just not getting any better....

Some would call me lucky, I suppose, because I have a job which doesn't require much of me. It's a reasonably well-paying job, I might add, which on paper gives me broad authority to create all sorts of new things for my company. Cool, right? The problem is that I work in a HUGE company where everyone is super-specialized, and a position like mine gets largely ignored by the drones around me. I ask complex questions like "what's your strategy?" or "can you tell me how you would go about doing this?" and you get answers that encompass the .046 inch scope of that persons job, which is like telling someone about your state by describing your back yard. So I sit around and try to figure it out on my own. And THAT, my friends, is boring.

So I kill time between spurts of activity by voraciously consuming music. I'm not one of those people who sheds a tear for the music industry, which has staved off it's own demise by convincing us all to buy CD versions of music we already had in the 80's and 90's. And I could really care less if they can't afford to "develop new artists" when I'm being force-fed the Game, Kelly Clarkson, and Frankie J (who the hell is that, anyway?). So my new favorite hobby is perusing www.allofmp3.com, a great music site where you can download music for $0.02 per MB. That averages out to about $1 per album. And you don't have to deal with all that nasty spyware that you get with the free downloading systems like Limewire and eDonkey (not that I've ever tried those.....) I was never sure I wanted a Matthew Sweet album until 20 minutes ago, when I decided that it was at least worth spending a dollar for it. And how often can you drop $2 on Quadrophenia or Europe '72, or $0.50 for a Flaming Lips EP (which I highly recommend). It's a dangerous dangerous habit for someone like me, who for some reason likes to have a copy of every song he may have ever liked, if even for a brief moment in time. (Check out my Thompson Twins collection for a sample of the madness)

Anyway, for those of you with iPods (which should be everyone but neanderthals and my siblings, at this point) I highly recommend this as an alternative to the iTunes music store, with the added bonus of helping prop up Russian capitalism while simultaneously flipping off Sony and Viacom.

Now back to work, unless anyone has other suggestions to distract me...